Tissue ablation is employed in the treatment of various ailments. One such situations where it may be desirable to perform a tissue ablation is for the treatment of a condition in the female reproductive system called menorrhagia, which causes excessive or prolonged uterine bleeding during a menstrual cycle.
One treatment procedure for menorrhagia is called endometrial ablation, which involves the treatment of selected portions of tissue with a heated fluid, referred to as hydrothermal ablation. The hydrothermal procedure involves flushing a high-pressure heated fluid within the uterine cavity for a specific time period to ablate the tissue.
Hydrothermal procedures use free flowing boiling water or saline to destroy the endometrial lining. High-pressure fluid can flow to each and every section of the cavity, and is not limited by irregularities or small sub mucosal fibroids within the cavity. The potential downside of using a high-pressure fluid is that the fluid can leak into undesirable areas such as fallopian tubes and possibly cause inadvertent burns.
The fallopian tubes are generally under slightly higher pressure than the uterus, but the high-pressure fluid used during hydrothermal ablation may be sufficient to force fluid into the fallopian tubes, which can result in undesired tissue burning. One technique to avoid damaging undesired tissue is to reduce the pressure of the fluid. At a reduced fluid pressure, however, the uterus may remain collapsed, and the resulting tissue-to-tissue contact may prevent efficient ablation.
Therefore, there exists a need for an improved hydrothermal tissue ablation device and method that allows usage of low-pressure fluid to reduce the likelihood of tissue damage.